Call for Papers

Our sub-theme aims at consolidating Creative Industries as a field of inquiry in the EGOS agenda, extending and enriching our prior dialogue on the paradoxes, tensions and coupling of art and business. The sub-theme has become a home to a vibrant and growing international community of scholars seeking to advance the understanding of processes and paradoxes in creative sectors.

Creative industries, particularly entertainment, showcase the dualities and paradoxes of an increasingly global and social world that relies on discovering and disseminating regional and national practices and talent. Given the globalization of entertainment industries and the concerns over how this influences national and local cultures, we are especially interested in scholarly work that explores the dynamic tensions between emerging and local creative actors and local formats, and the role of global firms and standards.

We hope to attract studies on how local social actors – artists and entrepreneurs, as well as creative organizations – organize, use rhetoric, or build networks of support to introduce new genres, approaches and mediums, and how these become islands of local or national culture, or institutionalized as new global cultural objects.

We seek papers in, but not limited to, the following areas:

• In a context of globalization, how have changes in institutions and institutional rules around creative products and endeavours, such as intellectual property, creative roles or national and legal policy shaped who and how develops and delivers them? How are meaningful trajectories achieved within (and outside of) the boundaries of institutional rules and the competitive dynamics in creative industries?
• In a globalized world, how does the social embeddedness of creative industries influence what kinds and how creative products are enacted? How do institutionalized logics, regimes and gatekeepers stifle or facilitate entrepreneurial initiatives in creative industries? How do the networks of relationships provide the connectivity needed for novel ideas to emerge and thrive, as well as for mainstream output to persist?
• How can we understand the role of events, competitions, award ceremonies and festivals in a globalized world? How do such events energize or compromise creative vision? Competitions such as design competitions in architecture or film festivals are critical yet understudied phenomena for how creative ideas and activities are channeled and recognized, shaping a field.
• Studies of networks, career and reputation processes that give birth to or change creative organizations and industries are also welcome. The careers and social networks of contemporary artists may provide fruitful ground for understanding the mechanisms of how creativity is translated into a cultural product that ultimately may shape how we understand ourselves, our society and an art world. How does this operate and perhaps change in a context of globalization?